Chapter 1: The Start

It's 1987 now, but the 12th of December 1919 was a totally different time. I should remember, because that was the day I was born, but I don't; maybe I was kind of small then or maybe I didn't get any brains.

However, I did get a memory. I still recall sitting on a sled which my father used to move the family and I found a shiny fork. I must have made an enormous racket because my dad picked it up. It was in the family for many years and it was my favourite. I must have been very young because my sister who is two years younger wasn't born yet. She came into this here world when we were living in the Rozenboom.

I was born in a little old house on a mud road called the Schoolsteeg. About 750m down this road which total length was something like a kilometre, we were the second house - about half way. In Hamersveld, there were three such roads: the Langesteeg, the Schoolsteeg (the public school was on it) and the Smousesteeg. Originally, they were built as supply roads to the waterlinie, a defence line with a dyke.

the surrounding lands to the south and east could be flooded in case of an attack by a foreign power - which happened the last time Napoleon of France tried to conquer all of Europe.

Papa was now on a hardtop brick road. Every day he had to hitch up the horse to collect the milkcans from the farmers in Hamersveld and transport the load to the dairy "De Vooruitgang" in Woudenberg, and then return the cans. He started around 6:00 am and returned home between 1:30 - 2:00 pm, having gone a total distance of approximately 16 km.

the house was very old and damp. Apparently, it was built with old bricks from the castle "Zwanenburg" which had been torn down a hundred or more years earlier. But it was home to us for 27 years.

Related resources:

Read all about Amersfoort on the day Carl Kaas was born: Friday, 12 December 1919. Use Bing Translate or Google Translate above to translate paragraphs from Dutch to English.

Kaas (noble family) from Wikipedia. "Kaas is the name of two related Danish noble families from Jutland, which were and are, respectively, two of the preeminent families of the Danish Uradel or ancient high nobility, which were represented in the Council of the Realm. they are known as the elder Kaas family and the younger Kaas family or named for their respective coats of arms (Sparre-Kaas and Mur-Kaas). Both families appeared in the middle ages, and they have been noble since time immemorial ..."

"the elder family is descended from the knight Niels (born 1292). the elder family became extinct in 1799, while the younger family descends, through intermarriage in the late 15th century, from this family ..."

"Several members of both families were represented in the Danish Council of the Realm, and statesman Niels Kaas of the elder family was head of the Dano-Norwegian government during the King's minority in the late 16th century, and as such the de facto ruler of Denmark-Norway. Other family members were fiefholders or high-ranking military officers."